a leeway to express

Javascript

Post navigation

Quiz Gadget is a quizzing gadget which has been developed using GCE (Gadget Control Editor), Google Pages and Google Docs. The Quiz Gadget uses Google Documents as the database. Many people would be wondering on the fact that the Quiz Gadget uses Google Document as database. Eventhough Google Pages does not provide server side scripting and database feature, one can combine the power of widgets and Google Document to get the same affect.

How do I create the database in Google Documents?- I create a spreadsheet in Google Spreadsheet with columns as my fields. Now fill in the data in the spreadsheet and now publish your spreadsheet as it makes the data available on net. The link to the published spreadsheet now forms the connection string to the database for the widget.

How do I connect to the data in the spreadsheet?- One can easily retrieve the HTML content of a webpage using the Remote Data Extracting Functions available in Google Widgets. Visit http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/remote-content.html for information and in depth understanding of such functions. The functions only requires the link to your published spreadsheet and fetches the HTML content as text to your widget.

How do you identify information from the HTML content?– One aquainted with HTML parsing should find extracting data from HTML content using HTML parsers an easy job. Though initially you may find the content to be unextractable but constant observation shall help you observe the patern and tags necessary to extract the info. Once you have the information playing with the information should be a easy job for techies and web page designers.

Limitations and constraints of such databases– One needs to heavily rely on Javascript for attaining the functionalities required for database support. Some users do not enable javascript on their browsers hence can be a severe limitation. As publishing of the spreadsheet is essential for database support, one cannot keep information privy from the users.

Looking at the interest of people in using Google Docs as a Database, I am contemplating on opening up a dedicated discussion forum on using Google Docs as database. Please take survey and help me finalize on my plans: